If You're Serious About Becoming an Entrepreneur, Start Prepping Now | Episode 110

I'm cheating on my wife with my business. When in the early years, uh, I got the idea that I would author a book. Really? And it was something along the lines like, I'm cheating on my wife with my business. And the reason I always thought that is because you literally have to steal time away from your family. You do sacrifice family and any kind of personal life. And devote it to the business. 100%. As hard as it is to say that, it is so true. It is like having an affair. And if well, for those of who are not like married or engaged to be married, let's say you're 22 and you don't have a significant other. What would be the analogy there that he or she could understand? Your friends, your social life, bye. Right. Yeah, yeah. Kiss kiss a goodbye. Like you're not doing trips anymore. You're not doing this. You're not doing that. So the I guess the litmus test, if if I could say that uh for lack of a better term, is how much like you come to me and say, I want to start this or I want to go on my own or I want to like do an insurance agency, is like, okay, how much are you willing to sacrifice? Welcome to the podcast dedicated to real estate, insurance, and building your business. Join us as we take you along our own business building journeys with additional wisdom from our network of local and national experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk. This episode is brought to you by Property Management Redefined. PMR is not just managing properties, we're creating partnerships that build long-term success for property owners. John and his team can be reached at manage at gopmr.com or by phone 267-753-6005. Tim. Yes, Sean. Who's a good client for PMR? Property management redefined is looking for property owners who value three things accountability, reliability, and a results-driven approach. You want to maximize returns, but still provide client and tenant satisfaction. There's a lot of property managers out there. Yes, there are. What does PMR do really well? Biggest thing is they're seamless and they're worry-free. So with that approach in mind, it allows the property owner to put their trust in PMR and know that the results will be there. The other thing I think a property owner is really going to value because they do it so well is that they have a local expert team, boots on the ground, managing your properties and your tenants' expectations every day so that you feel good about your investments. We have millions of listeners out there. Tens of millions. If they want more information, how do they find PMR? Right here, guys. Reach out to John Sachs and his team at Property Management Redefine. We'll take good care of you. Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bricks and Risk. I'm Timmy Gardy. And I'm Sean Mooney. Shawnee P. What's happening, sir? Not much. This is an interesting Obey hat. I haven't seen this one. That's kind of sweet, actually. What is it? So this is the official Obey X Bad Brains Really? Hat. Whoa, what makes it that? I'm trying to even understand. So it's the Bad Brains album look. Oh, that's one of their album covers, basically. Yeah, it's from Build a Nation. The album. Whoa, are they big Bad Brains fans? I mean they must be. I don't know. That's pretty dope. Fun fact. Who was the producer of Build a Nation album from Bad Brains? I'd love to know. I don't know any Bad Brains music, so why don't you tell me? Mr. Music Historian. Adam Yauk. Who's Adam Yauk? MCA. Oh, really? I don't think I realized that was his last name. Yeah. MCA was the producer of the album? How did he get involved in that? He just always loved him. Really? Fun fact. That is a fun fact. So he must have been young. Was that one of their earlier? Uh I think it was around the Bear Brains had been around for 30 years. Uh, I think when they did that album. Oh, okay. So I don't think MCA was. Oh, so this was like a later album for Bad Brains. Gotcha, because they're an older band. Yeah. All right, cool. What are we gonna do today? Today we're gonna be talking about becoming an entrepreneur or getting into the mindset of prepping yourself to becoming an entrepreneur and what those steps may look like, and maybe some guidance of how to get prepared. This reminds me of the episode we did about how to create a brand. And it's a very ground level, like foundational boots on the ground, if you want to call it, mindset of understanding how to get started. And the reason I want to compare it to that episode is like a lot of times when people get into business, any business, you know, real estate, insurance, I love to stay in pizza shop owner. You're like, just order the sign, just give me the cheapest one. Uh just yeah, I'm gonna bake pizzas right down the street. Uh just just go find that place right down the street. And they're just like, they're trying to like check the boxes so that they can start putting their hands in the dough. Like they're just like, I just want to put my hands in the dough. That's a good analogy. And I think I think that is such a mistake with any business, namely yours and mine. Someone just wants to get out there and start showing people houses, or someone wants to get out there and start uh writing premiums in insurance. They're like, I I've always wanted to do this myself. I just want to like grow this big premium book of business and call it Timmy G's Insurance Premies. It's not a bad name. Actually, it is a bad name. Um so it's like the real estate and insurance business builders podcast in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1913827. Something like that. Um so let's start this one off. So again, let's say, let's just do a real simple example. Someone's coming to you. Yep, let's keep it in your field. And they say, Hey Sean, I want to get into insurance. And getting into insurance, they're gonna be, let's call it pretty much a full commission role. Now I know like you could be an insurance rep for someone who owns, let's say, a big box insurance or independent. You're gonna get some salary, even if you're new, right? Yep. But most of it will come from your efforts. Yep. So someone comes to you and says, I want to get into insurance. What do I do? Don't do it. You're like, dress like me. It'll all work out. Who do you know that has a really good job? Go talk to them and go do what they do. Are you familiar with indeed.com? Yeah. You can submit your resume and get lots of jobs that make you pretty good money and time off. Yeah. That's a thought. It's my take. It's an idea. My two cents. Um, so someone coming to me, uh, kind of putting that at my feet. Yeah. Uh, and they don't have insurance experience, they say, Oh, I talked to a guy and he's a real successful insurance person. I I have an interest in insurance. I want to my my grandfather did it. How can I come in and do it? Yeah. Um, where to start? Hmm. Umber one, don't open your own agency, right? So, like, yeah, the first step into getting into insurance is not starting an agency, right? Yep. So the first step being is you're gonna have to find your footing. So you could go work for another agency, you could go work for a carrier, you could do uh underwriting, uh, or at the very least, uh take some classes and you know, just get some exposure into insurance. Is there a such thing as insurance teams? Like, do teams exist? It's it's pretty much you're either like a big box office or an insurance. Yeah, okay, cool. I was just checking. I mean, you could probably do that, but it would have to be driven by the team leader who's just making it rain. Yeah, so that really wouldn't make any sense. Yeah. All right. Um so it's really like go get experience. Number one. Don't start an agency. Go get experience. You're like, I know your grandpappy did this and was super successful doing it, but don't just go out and try and be like him. You could do it if you had a partner that was had a background in insurance. So if you went that route, you could do it. Yeah. Um, but on your own, go work for another agency, get experience, go work for a carrier, um, go do something to get at least a year of insurance experience. All right. So they're you're telling them where to go. Here's where I would go if I were you, if I wanted to get in this industry. Now the next question would be from him or her is how do I get it moving? Are you saying, like, oh, you just go work for this insurance office and like they'll just give you all the leads and and you'll be fine. What what would you what would you suggest? Hmm. Um, if I were talking to that person and say, okay, let's go the route of their oh, hey, go get experience, go work for an agency. Uh-huh. So they do that. Um and it, I guess it would depend on the latitude of the agency of what they would allow, but um I would recommend that they spend a third of their time networking. Okay. A third of their time learning or doing uh training or like insurance um like learning the classes. Yeah. And then a third like social media, like marketing, LinkedIn marketing, some kind of personal marketing to get their name out. And so I would say, like, you know, divvy it up however you want to do it by the day, or do every a third of a day doing this, a third, you know what I mean? To kind of spread it around. But that's where I would, you know, try to tell that person to start and then how to kind of work their schedule to get as much into the business as possible. All right. So you've told them where to go to look for the opportunity. You tell them how to spend their day once they have the opportunity. Now let's talk about like almost like the when. Like when do I make money, Sean? Yeah. When do I start feeling comfortable with insurance? So that's what it comes down to. They're like, when can I start making the money that I feel like I should be making at this period of time in my life or the amount of years I've been doing this, so I can keep doing this for years to come. Or get out. So I guess the more appropriate question would be when can I m transition from working for an agency to opening my own agency? Right. And that's kind of like step two, or would it be like, no, just be successful within that agency. Just work your way up to being the top salesperson? It really depends. Depends. Depends on the the person and their uh uh level of uh threshold for pain. Well, let's say they're like you. Your first ten years you work for other people. Yep. If they're gonna follow that same timeline, when can they actually start making some decent money that they'd be proud of in insurance? Uh working in an agency? I'd say probably three to four to five years. Okay, like three to five years. Three to five years. They'll be getting enough of a rip. Well, re years one to three, you know, you're not gonna be crushing, it's just a build. You know, you're building your clientele, you're building your book of business, you're building your network. You're laying the foundation in years one to three, and then by year five, all of those things are in place where you're starting to grow and renew at a level that really can sustain a really good uh pay. Okay. All right. Anything else you want to add to that before I die? Well, I think, and then from there it's okay. Do you want to make the decision to continue and to pace out working for that agency and not having any of the responsibilities? So it's almost like, okay, now you're at year five. Right. Do you want to stay the course? Just, you know, you fork in the road. You go right, that's the same way you've always gone. You know where you're going, you go right. You go left, you're probably gonna have to stop doing what you're doing and do something completely different and on your own. Yeah. So if you do that, which way you wanna go? Yep. Right or left. Yeah. And I think that is such an important thing for people to understand that I feel like no one really gets, probably when they get into your industry or mine. I feel like you I'm gonna backtrack and correct myself. I feel like you, because you had made the example before, you kind of knew right away when you started working at State Farm was the first one you worked at, right? When you started working at State Farm, you're like, Yeah, I'm I'm gonna be doing this on my own. Yep. So you knew right away. Yep. When I got into real estate, I will say, I kind of knew right away that I was very interested in starting an office because otherwise I wouldn't have worked for two independent shops. Yeah. That was the really the only way I felt like I could truly learn how to like start something, even if it was just me, party of one. How do I do it? Where do I go? How much does it cost? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I would say too, from all right, so let's take this from a real estate standpoint. Yeah. Because I probably have this conversation more than you because there's people in my network at Real, there were over a hundred people that came in and were either with me at the end or not with me at the end at Copper Hill. So Yeah, but you also talked to so many agents. Hundreds, you know, you know, if not like a thousand, like of just so many people I've talked to in this industry, just picking my brain. And all of them, with the exception of a few, have made a change in their career to go a different direction, go with a different broker, go, you know, doing something uh different within the real estate industry. Yeah. And I think all right, so let's go. When someone came to you and said, okay, where should I go? Yeah. So if someone came to me in residential real estate and said, Tim, where do I go to get started? I would first understand what they want. Yeah, what they want, but also it's like, where are you in your career? Are you 22 and you just finished college and you have like a marketing degree or poly sci or whatever you got? So you just got out of college. It's probably gonna be a little different advice than if you're South Philly Vinning at the age of almost 40, yeah, getting into real estate in like a new city. Right. Okay, so the advice will be different. But let's just say someone comes to me and says younger, they want to get into real estate. Where should I go? I'm new, I'm young, I'm interested in real estate. Be kind of similar to you would be like, do you want to be part of like a let's call it a group of people where you're like going into an office environment andor like getting leads from that team or brokerage and like just running around and doing things? Like, do you want people to kind of basically feed you fish? Or are you a little bit more interested in real estate because you want to learn how to fish so that you can build your own solo agent business from day one? Like, which way do you want to go? That's rare, right? You're not rare. No, really, it's not. You got someone. When I ask people, okay, when I ask people this question, yeah, I would say probably at least a third of them, give me the ladder. No, I want to, I wanna do this myself. Now, it doesn't mean financially it's gonna make sense. If they're living at home and they're patient and they're like, I can live at home for three years, I don't really have much of a social life. I'm just ready to freaking build this thing. Okay. Then I'm gonna teach you exactly the way that I learned because that's exactly what I did. Now, if you don't want that, which let's call the majority, more than 50% of people are gonna say, no, no, no, no. I want people to like give me things. I want to go learn. I want to be like ensconced. It's like George Costanza and Seinfeld, I want to be draped in velvet. You want to go be draped in velvet, go join that team, go join that big box shop, go join that place that there's something going on every day and in person and go see how you like it. Chances are, if you're again a smaller percentage of people are gonna go in and absolutely love that, and then the majority of people will go and be like, I did what I need to do to learn what I didn't know, and now I'm ready to kind of like put it on my own shoulders a little bit. So I would figure out exactly where what situation they're looking for. The team big box environment, very common, or the solo. You could be solo at a big box or you could be solo at a small independent brokerage, whichever way you want, and just understand why they want to do that. Then, so we talked about like where to get started, and then yours was like, okay, how? Like, would you say a third of your time on networking and a third of your time? Learning the business, and a third on marketing. Okay. So I would say, like, the how, I'm gonna relate this to myself because I love empowering people who are thinking of getting into real estate to play the long game, which is being a solo agent and learning. Just like you gotta figure it out. Like, and if you're like, I can't be solo and learn in my home office, which I think a lot of people can't do that. Okay, if you can't do that, then still be solo, but go here and shake some hands and grab lunches and go in their trainings and go to their uh conference every year and go to the awards banquet and work the open houses and hang out with team leaders and go do all that for like one to two years. I gotta believe. Wait, what number I think that in my mind, if you said laid that out, 90% of people that are younger would say, give me the team, give me the action, give me the activity, and I'll learn by getting fed and trying to network and do that, versus I don't need that. I'm gonna go at my own and try to figure this out. When I started in real estate 15 years ago, I would agree with you. It's way different now because of virtual brokerages, the new school model. The new school model is we got three Zooms going on today. You want to jump into one of these Zooms and we'll tell you how to work an open house? You want to jump in this Zoom and I'll tell you how to work your social media accounts? You want to jump in this Zoom, we'll go over the agreement of sale. Okay. So you don't need that anymore. So, okay, so the benefits of the team would be teaching you how to do an open house. It'd be like if someone says, I will just want to go in somewhere. I want like a nine to five vibe routine where I go into like a physical space and there is a person or people there that I can just work alongside or go out to lunch with or ask questions. Like they just want that traditional office uh routine. Okay. And that's more like a big box team model. Okay. Then there's also the new school entrepreneurial, young, even a young person. Yeah. I says, you know what? I'm more of a YouTube learner, I'm more of a DIYer. Like I was a marketing. Major in college, like I know what I'm doing. How do I do it? What am I doing? So that's my point is that that has changed from 15 years to five years that has changed. Right. So so you're able to offer some of those advantages of the in-person stuff, but offer them on a virtual platform. This is why, again, without bringing companies into this, this is why a company like Compass is trying to buy anywhere. Because Anywhere is the old, old, old model of all these different brands of real residential real estate brokerages under one big umbrella called Anywhere. Wait, didn't that uh isn't that like a done deal? It's a pending deal. Yeah. Okay. And Compass said, we want to eat you up because we're the new school model. We got the tech, we got the leadership, we got the structure, we got the splits, we got the whatever. Yeah. The team, you know, team growth. So they're trying to gobble them up. Right. Because in the last five years, like I said, I go into an office on a Tuesday at 11 a.m. or a Thursday at 1 p.m., and there's three people in this office of 300 agents. Okay, no one goes into the office anymore unless there's a reason to go into the office. You got a team that goes in the office Monday through Thursday for six hours a day, you're gonna go into the office Monday through Thursday for six hours a day because that's what the team is demanding and requiring of you. But if your team says, I'd rather you work out of your house and hit me up when you need me, you're gonna work out of your house because you can do it all from your house. Yeah. So that's a big change. So if someone came in and said, Hey, yeah, how do I do it? How am I spending my time? The number one thing I would tell them, whether they're going the old school way or going the new school way, is you want to start building your personal brand. This is the number one thing I would tell you. And you can do that so many different ways, like a thousand different ways. Yes. And well, Tim, why should I build a personal brand? Because what you're gonna find is that your name and your book of business will matter than any brokerage or any team you will ever work for in your entire residential real estate career. Bottom line. And it's only going to be more exacerbated as we move into the future with AI, with tech, with influence, with social media, with everything that's going on. Personal brand matters more every day now than it did before. Way, way more. So I would start telling them I want you to be solo, I and work for whatever brokerage you want. You want the big box, if you vibe with that, go with that. If you want the small corner shop with five agents, that's what I did. Go with that. So figure out the vibe that you want, but go in solo and start building your personal brand. Okay. Uh Tim, how do I build a personal brand? All right, let's let's dive into this. Okay. Like you said, a third networking and a third learning and a third, let's call it marketing. It probably wouldn't be all that different. Yeah. But what I do is I just did this in my annual agent workshop, is what I want people to do is have like their own expectation of their goals, like how many transactions they think they might be able to do. Everyone's got to have some kind of idea how that then translates into volume, and then that'll translate into your income. So that's what we have to do first. So if someone says I want to do 10 million in my first year, I'm like, no effing way, but it's not impossible. If you're gonna do that, here's what your schedule's gonna look like. It's gonna be an absolute nightmare. Yeah. But if someone said, No, I want to do like two, three million my first year, I'm like, that's pretty good. Like you'll mix, and if you're solo, you'll make more money because you're not paying the team leader. Right. So let's get you going down that path, and then I'll give them a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual marketing strategy that shows them what they should be doing day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, year in, year out to grow that personal brand. Hey everyone, this is Tim, your favorite bricks and risk co-host. But don't tell Sean. I hope you're enjoying this episode, and I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth. So if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic. Please also help spread the BR word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now, back to the show. So that is the how. And then the last one with time. Have you ever come across where someone came to you that said, I want to get into real estate that already had like a like a social media brand? Like a presence. Oh, yeah. And they're like, hey, I can I've got this network, I got this, you know, followers on social. Let me just convert that in and and and do real estate. I mean, I'm just gonna give a shout out to Corey Jacobson. Perfect example. You know, Wealth Juice podcast, shout out to Wealth Juice. He already had a community. Yeah, he has a community. Yep. So because he's got a community, he also has influence. And now he he got his real estate license and he's like, okay, how do I use my influence to build my real estate agent business? And the first piece of advice I gave him is don't I have a team. I said, don't even jump on my team. Yeah. I don't want you to do that. Go solo. And if you like where I'm at and you want to work alongside me to learn, let's do that. And we'll work deals together and we'll we'll meet up, we'll collaborate, we'll network, we'll do things together. Yeah. And that's how you will learn based on what you already have and where you want to go. So for him, that was a great to your point, that just happened recently. Yeah, good example. But there have been multiple people. I've met like uh like TV personalities, I've met people that have been like VPs in like large home builder companies that just have these massive networks and this like name like in and around Greater Philadelphia. And they're like, okay, I'm ready to be a residential real estate agent at a brokerage. I'm like, okay, like you're pretty far along. You're far along, but no one's most people will not tell you how to cultivate your sphere of influence the right way, day one, because if you just go join someone's team, they're just gonna make you a lackey. They're gonna be like, okay, you know, we get five open houses a week. You need to do at least two. That's a rule of the team. Okay, we get 100 cold leads a month. You got to call at least like 10 of these a week. That's what we do as a team. Or, hey, you know, we do this conference every year. You have to pay for the ticket, you have to go to the hotel, you have to go hang out with us at this conference. You've only been doing this three months, but you have to spend $3,000, $5,000 at this conference because that's what we do as a team. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's what some people pitch. You're either in or you're out. And if you're out, bye-bye. Yeah. So I like trying to let people figure things out. And then you can pivot back and forth. You could always go from solo for a year and be like, you know, I think I want to jump on a team for a year. Go jump on a team. What are you looking for? Maybe I can actually help you find the right team now that you've been doing it for a year, or go look up teams online. Like you can just do a Google search and find hundreds of teams and go pick the one you want. Um, but the last one was really uh like when to start making money in residential real estate, solo or a team member, nine times out of ten, you are going to be broke for two years. Like broke. You could be the one out of ten that just hustles, that has a network, that has influence, whatever, and you will make a decent living in your first year one or even year two. What was what was South Vincent? Yeah, what was South Philly Vinny's story? Uh, because I know we talked about that on the podcast a little bit in terms of how he got started and really wasn't it for him a couple years to really start to get going? Yeah, he only went solo in the last year, and I think he's been doing it for six years. So he did five years on a team. Five years on a team. Yeah. So it probably took him even a solid two years on the team to get going. To actually start making some money. Yeah. Because, you know, unfortunately, I don't want to downplay teams at all, but when you're on a team and you're brand new and you're really relying on the team for those leads or opportunities, like if they say here is a buyer or seller lead and you go out and capture it, you might only get like 25 to 50 percent of the actual commission once you capture it and they close. So that's like you're gonna have to do four times the amount of work as almost a solo agent just to get that income. Well, the other part of that, which is kind of fascinating in his story, is the uh the emergence of his personal brand. Yeah, right. So when you're on a team, it's probably a little bit harder, not for everyone. I'm speaking in generalities here, but for you to to develop your personal brand in the within the team structure, right? When you're on your own, it's like that's all you got. You have to. Your your hand is forced. Well, and I think too, it's like the old way of doing real estate is the brokerage itself was part of your personal brand. Yeah. I work for this big box shop or this independent brokerage. This is the kind of agent I am. This is where I'm identifying myself as an agent. Okay, that's the way it used to be. Then the new school brokerages came and they're like, no, no, no, remember that old thing? Like, just throw that in the toilet. Now you want to lead with your solo agent brand or your team brand first. And we're here, like in the background. We're here to give you an additional layer of credibility and value, but you don't need to put us first. Put yourself first. Yeah. And when you're getting started in real estate, if you go work for a team, you you really do kind of have to lead with the team first. The broker of the Williams team. Yeah. Most brokerages, again, some people lead, even if you're on a team, some people still lead with that big brokerage's brand, but that's becoming not as common. You're going to build your credibility, year one, year three, year five, like Vinny did, based on the team that you work for. Yeah. So what are you doing? You're wasting one year, three years, or five years spending, you're learning. Not wasting, but it's impeding your growth of your personal brand. Yeah, you can't start the runway for your own agent personal brand until you are done with that team, for the most part. I'm going to say nine out of ten. Okay. So the high, high majority, you got to follow with the team first, yourself second. If you go solo, you have to lead with yourself first. Old school or new school brokerage. You have to do that because you are not going to survive in today's cutthroat world of million plus realtors and everyone out there on every social channel, everywhere, shaking hands, kissing babies in person, podcasts, you know, YouTube, everything that's out there. You will not survive if I'm just Tim Gardy realtor and I'm crossing my fingers for deals and I have no team, no support. It's interesting when I uh when people ask me, you know, I get the question like, what do you do for a living? And I'm like, oh, I have an insurance office. I feel like I try on hats. Yeah. I'm a professional eBay buyer. If you'd like more details, hit me on the QR. Um no, and then they say, Oh, like who who do you there's an expectation there that oh, you run an insurance office. Oh, you must be linked to one of these big box insurance companies. You must be a state farm. You must be an all-state. Right. Because that's all they know. That's all they know. Right? Like it'd be unusual unless it's like a direct relationship, you know. But any you know, Joe off the street would be like, oh, it it must be all state or state farm. Do you know what's interesting about when I asked you, I'm like, are there teams in insurance? You're like, no. Because the structure doesn't really allow for that. It's not really an option, the viable option, let's call it. In real estate. I'm curious. I I now I kind of piques my interest if it's like, is there someone out there that kind of runs the real estate model? Yeah, yeah. They kind of like a subcategory of the work, it's gotta work somewhere where you have a team lead that just makes it rain and they can position themselves within the agency. I wonder. Um, but yeah, it's I think in real estate, the reason it's come as far as it has is really in the last 15, 20 years when teams started proliferating. Yeah, that's when the agent took more control of influence in residential real estate. So if I'm running a team, my clients are thinking of my team first and usually the brokerage second. Or if I'm a solo agent, I'm very, very good at what I do, even if this was 15 years ago, they're gonna want to work with me first and be like, oh, who are you with again? Oh, you're with them. Okay, gotcha. Not that that matters. Yeah. But uh to some it might, very small percentage of people. Uh that's kind of like why real estate has gotten this point and why brokerages have come in and flipped the model on its head is they're like, look, if the agent's leading first, what are we doing? Why are we getting why are we opening these market centers, or why are we opening these offices, or why are we like crossing our fingers and spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to just like round agents up and like throw them in these pens? Like, why are we doing that? It's different now. Well, not only is it different, but in the last year, two, three, four in real estate, with these brands being gobbled up and changed over and and uh acquired, it's if you've always like depended on the broker, you know, if you depend upon the broker to really drive your marketing, and then tomorrow it's like, oh, they were sold and this company bought them. Now you're a part of them. Are you now just part of this new name broker? Or is it like, oh, now I really need to like start my own personal brand because who knows what's gonna happen. Can't hang my hat on that anymore. Right. Because that can change. So I just lost, you know, the rug got pulled out by being associated with this brokerage under this name. No, it's I mean, it's a really good point. Um, all right. So before we shut this one down, the last thing I'll bring up with this. So it's like, want to be an entrepreneur, like start prepping now. The last question would be like, how do you prep someone's mindset? So that person's coming to you and saying, All right, you told me where to go, you've told me how to do it and like what I should be doing. Now, how should I think in order to like become an entrepreneur? Whether I'm 22 out of college or 40 years old and moving to a new city, what would you tell them for their mindset? So when in the early years, uh, I got the idea that I would author a book. Really? And it was something along the lines like I'm cheating on my wife with my business. And the reason I always thought that is because you literally have to steal time away from your family and devote it to the business. 100% as as hard as it is to say that, it is so true. It is. It is like having an affair. And if, well, for those of who are not like married or engaged to be married, let's say you're 22 and you don't have a significant other, what what would be the analogy there that he or she could understand? Your friends, your social life, yeah, buy. Right. Yeah, yeah. Kiss kiss it goodbye. Like you're not doing trips anymore, you're not doing this, you're not doing that. So the I guess the litmus test, if if I could say that uh for lack of a better term, is like how much, like you come to me and say, I want to start this, or I want to go out on my own, or I want to like do an insurance agency, is like, okay, how much are you willing to sacrifice? That's a really good way to put it. How much are you willing to give up in order to have this succeed? You know, if your thought is, you know, you're gonna put in nine to five and it's just gonna happen, it's not. Yeah. You know, you have to be willing to do, I don't want to say 24-7 around the clock uh time into it to get it off the ground. But I mean, you could easily be looking at 80 hours, 100 hours a week in various roles within the agency to make sure that this thing gets going. And so that would be my, you know, if you're coming to me, my question is, okay, how much are you willing to give up? Yeah, so your my your mindset is like to sum up what I just heard was here's how I'm gonna prep you for your personal life, okay, whether you're with someone or not with someone, to give that up in order to take there's only so many hours in a week. There's 24 hours in a day, there's seven days a week. So you're gonna have to take X percent of your week that you used to spend maybe with Netflix or going to the Jersey Shore or like playing soccer, whatever, like any of these activities that people have. You're gonna have to take those and you're gonna have to invest and sacrifice that time to focus on insurance. You're gonna have to use those extra hours. Yeah, because if you think about it in the beginning, right, you're the marketer, you're the accountant, you're the producer, you're the service team. You you play all these roles within the agency. And you, and you know, unless you've got capital up front from someone else or some somewhere else to go hire a staff, you're you're doing those roles to make it happen. And in order to do those roles, you need to have the time necessary to do all of those roles. Yeah. And so that's where it's 70 hours, 80 hours, 90 hours a week to make sure all of these different jobs are getting done. No, that's that's really good. I would probably say for myself, if I were giving advice to someone like getting into real estate, the mindset I would give them is one word, and I would tell them it's a commitment. If you are not committed to the idea of being a residential real estate agent for the next, let's call it 15 to 20 years, I think you're you're barking up the wrong tree. Especially with where things are going today. Because if you don't, let's say you even took South Philly Vinny's route, shout out to our man, by the way, and you just go starting on a team, that's fine. He did that for five years. Some people do it for three, some people do it for 10, and then they go out on their own. That's that's totally fine. But that's all less than 15 or 20. So they're just saying, I just want to do it this way for this period of time until I feel comfortable to start leading with my own name, let's call it. Okay. So the commitment is the number one thing I would give as advice for mindset. You have to be committed to residential real estate for 15 to 20 years if you want to see real success. And if I can look at my own journey, look, I pounded, pounded, pounded for my first five years. I got that up to, you know, in the teens of volume, basically as a solo agent, which is very hard to do. But like you in insurance, when you started, I was just working like, again, like like 80 hours a week. That's just what I did. And that's fine. I don't want to tell anyone you got to work 80 hours a week. If you want to work 60, you want to work 40. That's fine. But now this isn't a 15, 20 year learning curve. This might be a 25, 30 year learning curve if you only want to put 40 hours a week into real estate. That it's just the way it is. It's the commitment gets you in, the commitment gets you the runway, and the commitment puts you on the path to knowing that this is your career. Because that's what real estate is, in my opinion. It's a career choice. If you're like, I'm gonna do this for two years and hopefully I can make 60 grand or 100 grand or whatever, and then I'll and then I'll feel good, wrong business. Because if you are only looking at what you can make, you have no idea what it takes to come in to learn, build the relationships, the vendor relationships, the Google business profile reviews, the the name that you have in and around your metro area that other agents can speak highly of you and say, Oh, I've worked with this person, they're fantastic. You have no idea what you're up against in today's day and age because it is cutthroat. And the reason that 87% of people get in and out of real estate in five years or less is solely because of that. It's commitment. They're just not committed, they're trying to make money. Again, maybe they're following a passion. Okay, I love real estate. That's awesome. But if you're only working 20 hours a week, don't expect this to be much of anything. Not very passionate if you're only working 20 hours a week. Well, hey, some people are parents, some people keep their other job, and they have to keep those things. Like, I don't want to like judge anyone from like only one. They're passionate about being a parent. That's fine. Exactly. Yes, do you then don't expect this thing to take off? Yeah, exactly. So that's a really good point. Um, but that's what I would recommend. So let me go ahead and shut this one down. Let's close it out. YouTube, get us on the YouTube. We keep barking at you guys. 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